Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien was named the highest-earning "dead celebrity" of 2022.
Forbes named the highest-earning deceased celebrities of the year from a list of 13 entertainers, artists and athletes, with the creator of Middle-earth coming out on top. According to the list, the Swedish video game and holding company Embracer Group purchased Middle Earth Enterprises, which encompasses intellectual property rights for movies, video games, and merchandise, for $500 million.
Following the closure of the deal, Embracer will plan to share these rights with other entities who already own parts of the Tolkien IP, including the Tolkien Estate as well as HarperCollins, Amazon and Warner Brothers/New Line. Tolkien passed away in 1973. Forbes has described the deal as the most complex split of IP rights in history. According to the Lord of the Rings fan site The One Ring, this deal entitles Embracer to every word written in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy of books, which encompasses The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and The Return of the King. Embracer reportedly plans to develop both video games and new spinoffs with this new IP.
Will Lord of the Rings See Even More Adaptations?
The Lord of the Rings trilogy was adapted by Peter Jackson into three award-winning films, starting with The Fellowship of the Ring in 2001, followed by The Two Towers in 2002 and Return of the King in 2003. Jackson would go on to direct three more films inspired by The Hobbit, with the first released in 2012. In 2022, nearly a decade later, Amazon Studios released the first season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, which is set thousands of years before the events of The Hobbit.
The Rings of Power is intended to be a five-season series focusing on the Second Age of Middle-earth and will follow the rise and fall of the Dark Lord Sauron. The series is reportedly the most expensive show that Amazon's Prime Video has produced yet, with Season 1 costing the studio $465 million alone. Production on Season 2 has already begun in the United Kingdom.
Tolkien died in 1973 in Bournemouth, England. He was a philologist and literary professor, who published The Hobbit in 1937. 17 years later he published the first part of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which was originally written as one book. Neither The Hobbit nor The Lord of the Rings has been out of print since they were first published.
The Embracer Group was founded in 2011 as Nordic Games, rebranding to THQ Nordic in 2016, and rebranding again into The Embracer Group in 2019. It is based in Karlstad, Sweden. As of August 2022, the company owns 131 game development studios in over 40 countries worldwide and is the largest gaming corporation in Europe.
Season 1 of The Rings of Power and The Lord of the Rings trilogy are currently available to stream on Prime Video.
Source: The One Ring, Forbes